Opening Day at Whistler

Opening Day Line Up - GLC Patio

I was actually a little late getting to the mountain this morning, arriving around 8:30am (the normal opening time). Today, they managed to get the lifts running earlier, so by the time I got there, people were uploading already. Still, the line-up was LONG, winding all the way back past Cittas in the Village Square.

Opening Day Line Up - Village Square

Despite the looks, the line moved fairly quickly and the mountain itself wasn’t very busy (although Emerald chair had a decent line up whenever I went past). The had opened up Upper Olympic down to Olympic Station, so I keep skiing down and riding the gondola instead of Emerald. Meanwhile, Red chair had virtually no line every time I went through it – (probably because the main lightboard was saying small line at Emerald and 5 min wait at Red).

Green Acres

As for the snow, it was amazing! The coverage was surprising good (I still stayed on-piste 99% of the time though) and the powder was light and fluffy I skied close to all the open runs, and a few of the closed ones – the snow was fantastic the whole time.To compare the coverage, here are two almost identical photos of the ski runs called Fisheye and Little Red Run which are found under, and near the top of, Red chair.

First, the photo from today

Fisheye and Little Red Run

and now the photo from December 2nd 2008

Fisheye

One last thing, this year Ski Patrol have introduced a new ‘Temporary Boundary’ sign. It is being used to signal that an area is out of the ski area boundary (so technically are not patrolled) – even though that same area is normally within the boundary. This is is response to the incidents last year where people were hurt (even died) while skiing in areas that are normally open, but were closed due to the marginal snow coverage.

Temporary Boundary sign

There are more photos from today in the photo gallery for November 2009. They are found on page 2.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Snow Reports.